Famous People of SIDCUP
‘Famous People of Sidcup’ is a celebration of the national achievements and local contributions of a selection of individuals in the Lamorbey and Sidcup district. We hope that learning about them will encourage a greater understanding of our local history and pride in our town. His expedition name was Birdie, on account of his red hair and beaklike nose. They reached the South Pole on 18 January 1912 but the return journey was hampered by lack of food and freezing temperatures. Bowers and his compan- ions died on or about 29 March 1912, the date Doreen Bird (1928-2004), given by Scott for his last journal entry. founder of Bird College Conservatoire of Dance and Musical Theatre Doreen Bird was born in London and moved with her parents to 42 Braundton Avenue, Sidcup. It was in their living room aged just 17 that she first started teaching students. Her School of Dance was based at various premises including Studio House on the corner of Crescent Road/Station Road and an old school in Birkbeck Road. Doreen lived with her American husband, Frank Cook, in Chislehurst. She was an examiner, worldwide lecturer and Council Member of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. She worked on the choreography for four produc- tions at the Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre. When she retired as Principal in 1998, her college had achieved its place as a centre of excellence. It is Rose Bruford (1904-1983), now based in Alma Road. founder of Rose Bruford College of Theatre Henry Robertson ‘Birdie’ Bowers and Performance (1883-1912), polar explorer Rose Bruford graduated from the Central Henry Robertson Bowers was born at Greenock School with top honours in 1928 and became a on 29 July 1883. After the death of his father visiting teacher of speech and drama. From Alexander, his mother Emily brought up Henry 1941 she taught speech and drama at the Royal and his two sisters in Sidcup. They are shown Academy of Music and mime at the Royal on the 1891 census at 13 Carlton Road. He Academy of Dramatic Art. Although she had joined HMS Worcester as a cadet in 1897 and little money, she began preparing to found her voyages took him to Cape Horn and India. own school. From 1950, she rented part of In 1910 Bowers was invited by Captain Scott to Lamorbey House from Kent Education Commit- join the Terra Nova. tee for £5 annually and this is where her College operated increasingly successfully. Rose lived at 79 Burnt Oak Lane and later at 19 Crescent Road, Sidcup. She was succeeded as Principal of the College in 1970 and left a legacy to Sidcup in the highly successful college that bears her name.
Sidney Frank Godley, VC (1889-1957), awarded the Victoria Cross in World War I Born in East Grinstead, Sidney Frank Godley moved with his family to Sidcup and on the 1901 census they were living at 4 Ethel Cottages, Alma Road. He attended the Sidcup National School and from the age of 14 he worked in a hardware store. In 1909 he joined the Army and when war broke out in 1914 he was serving with the 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. At the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914 he performed an act of gallantry that led to him being awarded the Victoria Cross. Injured and captured, he spent Sir Harold Gillies, CBE (1882-1960), the remainder of the war as a prisoner. pioneer of modern plastic surgery Afterwards he worked as a school caretaker in Harold Delf Gillies was born in New Zealand Tower Hamlets and retired to Loughton, Essex. and studied medicine at Cambridge, later He is commemorated in Sidcup in the name of specialising in ear, nose and throat surgery. He the sheltered accommodation ‘Frank Godley joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1915 Court’. and witnessed the terrible facial injuries sustained in the trenches. Gillies pressurised Douglas Macmillan, MBE (1884-1969), the War O ce to open a designated specialist founder of Macmillan Cancer Support hospital and The Queen’s Hospital opened in Born in Somerset, Douglas Macmillan entered Sidcup in 1917. With his colleagues Gillies the civil service in London in 1902, working for pioneered experimental approaches to the Board of Agriculture and later the Ministry reshaping badly dis gured faces and Sidcup of Agriculture and Fisheries. He was appointed became an international centre for training in MBE in 1944 for his support to young civil plastic and oral surgery. servants. After the war he continued as a plastic surgeon The death of his father from cancer in 1911 had and became the rst President of the British a profound e ect on him and he set up a Association of Plastic Surgeons. Knighted in charity to help cancer su erers and their 1930, he was also a keen golfer and accom- families. This later became Macmillan Cancer plished painter. Support. He managed the charity from his home which from 1924 was at Walden (now 11) Knoll Road, Sidcup and fund-raising events were held there. A man with many interests, he NT , ESCE Tom Mann (1856-1941) LK CR 1 wrote poetry, arranged walking tours and was a NORFO trade unionist and socialist member of Sidcup Literary and Scienti c Thomas Mann was born in Warwickshire on 15 E Society. In 1966 he left Sidcup and returned to N A L April 1856. He began work at the age of 9. He YS Somerset, where he died of cancer three years DA later. had little schooling but he displayed a keen desire for knowledge and this led him to E U socialism and trade unionism. He served as N E V General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society A Y of Engineers 1919-21. Prison sentences for E L S sedition did not stop him from going on R E L speaking tours in support of striking workers, 2 L I and in 1936 he addressed a rally of marchers in W 3 Trafalgar Square. In 1935 Tom and his wife Elsie moved into a HALFWAY STREET newly-built semi-detached house at 29 Norfolk Crescent, Sidcup. With endless energy for campaigning, he travelled by ship to Russia even at the age of 80.
D ROA HURST SIDCUP
NUE RADAY AVE FA
14 LONGLANDS ROAD 6 5 4
STATION ROAD
1. Norfolk Crescent, home of Tom Mann MAI N R 2. Braundton Avenue, home of Doreen Bird OA D
3. Rose Bruford College of Theatre and
Performance at Lamorbey Park 7
4. Waring Park BEXLEY LANE
5. Alma Road, home of Sidney Frank Godley H 10 S I I GH 6. Bird College Conservatoire of Dance and D ST C U Musical Theatre P
B 7. Foots Cray Place, home of Sir John Pender and Y 11 8
P of 1st Baron Waring D A 13 A 9 S O S R 8. Knoll Road, home of Douglas Macmillan T S 9. Frank Godley Court, Et eld Grove R
U A H 2 10. Site of Sidcup Place, home of Dame Ethel E 11 L Smyth S I S ID A H CU 11. Church of St John the Evangelist C P 2 H 0 IL 12. Queen Mary’s Hospital, formerly The Queen’s L
Hospital
13. Carlton Road, home of Henry Robertson ‘Birdie’
Bowers and of Elizabeth Wiskemann A 21 14. Longlands Road, home of John Mercer 1 12 Sir John Pender, GCMG (1816-1896), pioneer of undersea cabling John Pender began his working life in the textile industry in Scotland, later moving to John Mercer (1923-2015), Manchester where he became an auent merchant. Realising the potential bene ts of Normandy veteran, local teacher and improved communications with the USA, he historian invested a considerable amount of money in As a local historian, author and lecturer, John the Atlantic Telegraph Company in its attempt Mercer worked to make Sidcup a good place in to lay a telegraph cable on the ocean oor. which to live. A Normandy Veteran, he was Finally a cable was laid in July 1866 allowing awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French Queen Victoria and President Andrew Johnson Government. He taught at Hurstmere School to communicate. Over the next 15 years, and then became an education lecturer. Pender’s companies laid cables which linked He was Chairman of Bexley Civic Society and Britain to Australia, South Africa, China and worked to preserve conservation areas includ- South America. ing Danson House and Stables. He pursued the Also serving as a Member of Parliament, John movement to erect plaques to famous local Pender lived from 1876 at Foots Cray Place and people of which there are two in Sidcup, and he he was knighted in 1888. He is buried at All wrote six books on local history. Latterly living Saints Church, Foots Cray. in Longlands Road, he was a long-term member of Lamorbey & Sidcup Local History Society and Dame Ethel Smyth, DBE (1858-1944), Chairman of Sidcup U3A, he worked with Bexley composer and su ragette Arts Council and was a school governor. He was Ethel Mary Smyth came to Sidcup as a young a tour guide at Red House, Bexleyheath and child with her family, living at Sidcup Place served as a Lay Reader at St John the Evangelist, which was a large house on the present site of Sidcup for 32 years. St John’s Road/Market Parade. Ethel fought for the opportunity to study music in Leipzig and became a highly acclaimed composer. In 1910, after meeting Emmeline Pankhurst, Ethel decided to devote two years to the cause of women’s su rage and she composed the rousing anthem, March of the Women. After smashing windows in the Colonial O ce she was arrested and imprisoned. In 1915 she volunteered as a radiographer at a eventually bought Foots Cray Place. During the military hospital. First World War many of his factories were Despite increasing deafness, she continued to turned over to the production of war materials. compose and wrote her memoirs, fondly Waring was the Kent County Commissioner for describing her childhood home in Sidcup. She Scouts and opened up the Foots Cray Place was created DBE in 1922. grounds to jamborees, one of which was attended by Baden-Powell, the Chief Scout. He donated the spire to All Saints Church and gifted part of his birch wood to the people of Sidcup, now known as Waring Park. In 1922 he was made 1st Baron Waring of Foots Cray. Oxford University Press Archives Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971), journalist and historian Elizabeth Wiskemann was born of Anglo- German parentage at 14 Carlton Road, Sidcup. She obtained a First in History at Newnham College, Cambridge and visited Berlin in 1930. Fascinated by German life, she began dividing her time between teaching history at Cambridge and her journalistic career. An ardent opponent of National Socialism, she wrote articles on German a airs for periodicals including the New Statesman. She was arrested by the Gestapo and expelled from Germany in 1936. Wiskemann spent the Second World War in 1st Baron Waring (1860-1940), Switzerland, o cially as the assistant press industrialist, public servant and benefactor attaché to the British legation in Bern but in Samuel James Waring was born in Liverpool reality responsible for gathering non-military and inherited a furnishing company from his intelligence from inside Germany and the father. He was astute, hard-working and occupied territories. As an academic historian ambitious, and in 1903 the company merged she wrote several books including a pioneering with Gillow to become Waring and Gillow. He study of relations between Hitler and Mussolini, came to Sidcup in 1898 when he leased and The Rome-Berlin Axis (1949). The Lamorbey and Sidcup district In the mid-19th century Sidcup was just a small street of houses with a coaching inn, The Black Horse, surrounded by countryside and a few homes of the gentry. The rst church, St John the Evangelist, was consecrated in 1844. It was the arrival of the railway in 1866 which changed the district’s fortunes. Sidcup’s situation, close to London, made it a popular choice for house-building. By 1914 the population was over 8,000 and there was an abundance of amenities, including a Public Hall, with a large number of good shops in the High Street. There were many local clubs and institutions such as the Sidcup Literary and Scienti c Society, Sidcup Rie Club, Sidcup Golf Club, Sidcup Horticultural Society and Sidcup Boy Scouts. The 1930s brought further housing development, especially in the Lamorbey area, and with it more shops, schools and leisure facilities. To nd out more visit: Lamorbey & Sidcup Local History Society: www.lam-sid-lhs.co.uk Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre: www.bexley.gov.uk/services/archives-and-local-history
Produced by L A M O R B E Y AND SIDCUP Local History Society in partnership with Sidcup Partners Ltd
View of Sidcup High Street c1910 (Bexley Archives)